CORRESPONDENCE.
GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE EAST.
ITO THE EDITOR OF TOE "SPECTATOR-"l SIR,—In my last letter I said that there was one Power which Germany dreaded—namely, Russia—and this letter will be de- voted, in the first place, to Germany's relations with that country. By a natural transition Germany's expectations and ambitions in the Near East will follow, and the Far East will conclude the picture, to which a certain unity is given by the shadow of the Northern Colossus always looming in the background. As most of my authorities have been mentioned.in previous letters, I can dispense with a formal bibliography, only making my detailed references to my sources somewhat fuller than has'hitherto seemed necessary.
That Russia is the nightmare which haunts the German mind it is hardly necessary to go about to prove. We should none of us sleep better if we knew that there were some hundred thousand Cossacks encamped on the other side of our (invisible) frontier. "Once more, as in Napoleon's day, a Great Power, this time Russia, threatens all the rest. Russia is a monstrous danger of the future The disappearance of the German Power would be a very dangerous loss for England. Have we not, both of us, nearer foes than one another? In the past the two great Germanic nations have stood side by side. We conclude that in the decisive conflicts of the future their attitude will be the same. Let us not, therefore, be irritated into antagonisms which perhaps in the great moment will not be the decisive ones " (Marcks, " Deutschland and England," 1900). As the contingency of an Anglo-German Alliance against Russia is thus more than hinted at, it is best to say frankly that the chief objection to it, though not the only one, from the English point of view, is that stated by the Spectator in its article (October 4th, 1902) on "Germany's Aspirations in Regard to Our Foreign Policy,"—that Germany cannot and will not give us the quid pro quo for our Fleet. In case of a Russian attack on India, would Germany send an army across the Russian frontier ? No, in no conceivable circumstances. Therefore in no conceivable circumstances can she have our Fleet. Even a secret treaty binding Germany• absolutely to such a step would make no difference, for was not Bismarck the statesman who laid it down that " no people could sacrifice its existence on the altar of fidelity to treaty, but would go only so far as suited its own interests" ? (" Nauticus " in " Flotten-Novelle").
"Either one does not think of Russia at all," says another German writer, "or one does so with a feeling of anxious dread of the Colossus" (Diezmann on "Politischer Sinn bei Deutschen and Russen," in Preussische .Tahrbiicher for March, 1903). The well- known Russian newspaper, the Nome Vremya, is quoted by another German authority (Schiemann) as declaring that "war between Russia and Germany is a question of time only." Only rr. Hans
Delbruck, who as a rule is by no means an easy-going optimist, takes the Colossus somewhat less seriously. After discussing signs of possible future catastrophe—economic and political—in
Russia, he goes on (Preussische Jahrbacher for August, 1902) :— " Only this much can one say with certainty, that European diplomats and European financiers show lack of foresight if they leave all these signs unheeded. Political catastrophes often reach the bursting-paint with astonishing rapidity and quite unexpected. The vital question is : Is Ruseia a Great Power of the future, or belie not ? Scarcely- any one has doubts as to the future of Russia; yea, European financiers even lend her. money. Do the statesmen and the financiers know what they are about ? " (" Mit Becht ?"—the German is magnificently brief.) Suppose, now, that a great war between Germany and Russia does actually take place, and suppose the Germans win—the other alternative is not contemplated by .my authorities—what are to be the German terms of peace? In the first place, a new great Polish State is to be formed, to serve as a buffer between Germany and Russia. The Galician and Russian Poles would be united,into a new Polish Kingdom. A new Ruthene State would constitute another buffer, and yet another would be provided by a Greater Roumania, which would 'serve to separate Russia from the Southern Slays. Austria, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Turkey must have war- ports on the Black Sea, and Austria must have Salonica. Russia would have to cede Finland to Sweden and Bessarabia to Austria, and a new Bessarabian State would be formed, in- cluding Odessa and the Sulina mouth of the Danube (" Gross- deutschland mid Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950," by a Pan.. German). This idea of a restored Poland has long been familiar to the German mind. On the Treaty of Peace concluded after the Crimea Francis Lieber wrote :—" I do not hesitate to call it an inadequate one; not even Poland re-established, which is, I take it, a sine qua non for Europe." As for the Danube mouths, so far back as 1844 no less a person than Moltke ex- pressed the hope that "Austria will guard the rights and the future of the Danube-lands, and that Germany will at length succeed in liberating the mouths of her great river." That is the polite, old-fashioned way of putting it. The modern German version (Ilene, " Volks and Seewirtschaft") is,—" Wrest the Danube from Slavdom down to its mouths."
This confident tone—and neither the Pan-German of " Gross- deutschland" nor E. von Halle is to be compared for truculence to the author of " Germania Triumphans; who in his recon- struction of the world's map as it will be in 1915 not only takes from Russia all that " Grossdeutschland" takes, but carries Germany to the Dnieper and the Volga, and gives her a great crescent of Russian territory, with the Crimea as its centre—is a little surprising in view of the fact that the German element is not advancing on its eastern frontier, but shrinking rather. "The time for land-expansion for Germany has gone by. The German language-frontier in Europe is retreating rather than advancing" (Ehrenberg, in " Handels and Machtpolitik "). " We are almost wanting in men for the Germanisation of East Germany" (Schurtz, in the Grenzboten). "Germany will need all her population to dam back the Slav tide on her eastern border, and should not therefore encourage emigration to South America" (Halle). " Prussia has made no national advance as against the Poles. The frontiers, speaking generally, are what they were in the fourteenth century. The political horizon of the German towards the East ceases with the Empire's frontier, indeed it even finds its end when it reaches the Polish language- frontier in Prussia's own Posen" (Diezmann).
Such homely matters of fact do not, however, prevent great hopes. The most famous of German economists, Rodbertus, is frequently cited by these modern Gerinans on behalf of a forward policy in Turkey. In 1863 Rodbertus wrote to Lassalle:- "I hope to live to see the day .when the heirship of Turkey shall have fallen to Germany, and regiments of German soldiers or German workmen are stationed on the Bosphorus." Ever since the days of Ross and Fallmerayer Germans have fancied that they saw a field for German colonisation, and perhaps for German sovereignty, in. Asia Minor. The Anatolian Railway, already carried by German capital and German engineering 'as far as Konia, and to be carried, if circumstances permit, to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, has naturally strengthened such ideas. The German hope has always been that the railway .would be attended or followed by the settlement of German colonists along the route. But the Porte has set its face against any such scheme, and nothing has been done in that sense- as yet. From the political point of view, tho next sections of the line will be the important ones. Russia, encamped in the highlands about the sources of the Euphrates, regards it as her mission to drop some day from the mountain to the plain, to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. The Russians coming from the North and the Germans coming from the West will some day meet. The ancient Greek oracle told Croesus, coming like the Germans from the West, that when he had crossed the Halys he would destroy a great Empire. The Halys is the river which may be regarded as constituting a possible rough division of Asia Minor into an eastern and a western sphere. It is this eastern sphere on which the Germans aro now about to enter. When Croesus, defeated, ruined, and saved only by a hair's-breadth from a miserable death, complained of the falsehood of the oracle, the reply of that venerable but wide-awake institution was that it had said that Croesus would destroy an Empire, but it had not said which Empire. Absit omen !
The next stage on the eastward journey is Egypt, the references to which in my German authorities contain no recognition of England's work in organising the administration and the finances, but only see in our occupation a means of bringing pressure to bear upon us at a convenient moment. Schiemann, the Berlin Professor, observes that. Germany can make England's position in Egypt untenable by. joining France and Russia. " Grossdeutsch- land" would like to see France and Germany reconciled,.'" of course at the expense of others:' and would square France with Egypt. "Germania Triumphans " would also turn us out: of Egypt, but would put back Turkey in our place. Imagine the state of mind of an educated European who seriously proposes to replace the Turkish yoke on a people which had escaped from it ! That Germany would reap any advantage, economic or political, from such a.policy does not appear.
Before passing on to, and concluding with, China, brief refer. erica must be made to some mysterious scheme, of which I find hints in more than one of my authorities, for a German occupa- tion of the Pule Lantar group of islands off the Malay Peninsula. The chief authority is Dix (" Deutschland auf den Hochstrassen des Weltwirtsohaftsverkehrs," 1901), who informs his readers that one of the Malay Rajahs owns an island group, containing a bay of sufficient depth and extent to shelter even the greatest steamships, and protected against the South-West monsoon. "This group, called Pule Lantar, had been wholly overlooked until a retired German naval officer, Captain Rust, discovered its possibilities qua harbour and qua plantation-colony. It is also a great place for tin. Unfortunately the scheme was prematurely made public owing to a private colonial quarrel, and thereby, it may be conjectured, a satisfactory solution for ever made im- possible The scheme must be regarded as shipwrecked in the moment of its publication." What exactly it all means is far from clear - but no doubt the Governor of the Straits Settle- ments knows all about it.
A few last words on China. Hermann Schumacher, now Pro- fessor at the University of Kiel, and formerly, it would seem, either Consul or merchant at Hong-kong, has an important article on " Germany's Interests in China " in the second volume of "Handels and Machtpolitik." He gives a picture of Hong-kong's humble and difficult beginnings, and contrasts it with the present. He waxes boastful on the distinguished place occupied by Germans in the business life of Hong-kong, but has no word in recognition of the English liberality, which alone has made that possible, or of the fact that these Germans are but late-comers to the feast spread by the labours of Englishmen in the early years of struggle against overwhelming difficulties. He mentions the friendly atti- tude of England towards Germany as regards Shantung, but has no word for that either. On the other hand, he tells his country- men that England's game in China is to control other branches of the Administration as she controls the Custom, and, above all, to keep the Customs permanently in her hands,—i.e., after Sir Robert Hart's death or resignation. It is an international interest, he says, to thwart that game. He admits that there are double as many English firms as German at Shanghai, and yet Dix expresses the general German opinion when he says that Germany will not recognise an English Yangteze sphere, but will, on the contrary, if China breaks up, seize a large slice of the Yangtaze region for her- self. As the theory of spheres is altogether unsound, and as the "open door" is the policy for which we have to work, and if need be even fight, that need not greatly trouble us. It is satisfactory to find that Schumacher is strong in his conviction that China is wholly indigestible, and therefore non-annexable, by. Europe.
Is the ".Yellow Peril" serious ? In the seventh volutne_of Helmolt's new German history of the world, now being published (Heinemann) in an English translation, I find these words:— "When South-Eastern Asia, which numbers seven hundred to eight hundred million tractable, frugal inhabitants, has completely adopted the material civilisation of Western Europe, then the,in-
dustries of the smaller continent must yield to them If ever the foreign countries which are still half-grown refuhe to Europe the tribute of trading profits because they have become grown-up, independent, and competent rivals, Europe will have to look for her salvation to warlike and political forces. . . . . . As Goethe says, ' The law is mighty, but necessity is mightier." So much for the German Professor at his desk. Schumacher, who has actually seen both China and Japan, takes, quite a different view. Only the simpler branches of industry, in which a settled techniqne has been attained, with machines requiring little repair, or adaptation, and in which the division of labour has been carried but a little way—such industries as wool and cotton spinning—will suit the Chinese. And even with regard to those industries it • is a significant fact that in 1898 the Shanghai cotton-spinning mills had only 60 to 70 per cent. of their spindles going, while of the twenty-five silk-spinning factories no fewer than fourteen had stopped work entirely. " But where, as in most branches of modern industry on a great scale, a subtle interaction of many parts is needful, where the machines require constant repair, where equality in international competition cannot be 'attained by the learning of manual dexterities once for all, but demands the continuous intellectual development and completion of technical science and apparatus, there the danger of an effective great- scale competition of these races shrinks to almost nothing.". So mach for the Yellow bogey. Needless to say that, the great majority of those who really know China agree with Dr. Schumacher.
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